The History Behind the Trip

Here is my understanding of how the plans for this trip came to be.  For us Canadians this is a portion of what we put together for our church leadership to see what we wanted to be a part of, so that Canadian supporters could channel funds through our church and get the tax credit for their donations.

Centershot is a non-denominational discipleship program that combines the Gospel with Olympic-style target archery to connect families to the local church.

The purpose of Centershot is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the local church.  It is easy to see that Centershot believes the local church is one of God’s best plans to spread the Gospel message.   The heart of Centershot is helping local churches touch the lives of the very people that live within their communities.

Since its inception in 2005, Centershot Ministries has been introduced in 47 states and 18 foreign countries.  More than 3000 churches, camps, outdoor ministries and missionaries are using the Centershot program to reach families for the Kingdom of God.  Thousands of families are connecting with their local church and are being introduced to the saving Grace found in Jesus Christ.  

In 2011, John Rickenbach (president of Centershot) and Kevin Vogt (vice president of Centershot) met Jacques Van Bommel.  Jacques leads a ministry organization in South Africa called Reaching A Generation, RaG for short (www.rag.org.za). They realized they shared the same passion for reaching others with the Good News and hope of Jesus Christ, especially young people. They have partnered to establish Centreshot SA (South Africa) with RaG serving as the parent ministry for Centreshot in SA. The Lord has blessed by opening many doors over the last couple of years for this ministry and Centreshot SA has been growing more rapidly than any place in the world.

Part of this growth took place on September 14th,2012 when Reaching a Generation along with Centershot leaders (John and Kevin) from the USA conducted a training session for 20 basic Archery Instructors from 12 institutions across South Africa. They were trained for 3 days in the beautiful open fields of Shikwaru lodge and now have taken their training back to their parts of the country to use as a tool to reach their own communities, sharing the Good News of Christ.

One of the doors that has opened is in the schools of South Africa.  An opportunity has arisen for Centreshot SA to go into schools teaching archery and sharing Jesus with the children. This is where we come in!  We have been personally asked by Kevin Vogt if we, along with other leaders from across North America want to be part of the first international team of Centershot Instructors to go into these schools.  This is an amazing opportunity that God has orchestrated.  Kevin has shared he has been overwhelmed with the support and willingness for leaders to join this team! 

We, along with approximately 17 others, from across North America, will go and teach archery as we do here in our Centershot Ministry.  Then as part of the sessions we will have opportunity to share the Gospel as a unified international team of Centershot instructors.  Part of Centreshot South Africa's role after these sessions will be to continue the work in these schools using the tool of archery to help these kids grow in their faith and reach others to make decisions for Christ in the future. We will have opportunity to reach out to five different schools on the days of our trip, both presenting the Gospel directly, having fun teaching kids archery, and providing support to the instructors there to assist them in growing this ministry in their country!